Events

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Hebrew type symposium participants, including Kit MacNeil (U. Toronto Massey College) (RT), print broadsides at the interactive printing workshop, Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA), Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Hebrew Type Symposium

An interdisciplinary symposium on Hebrew printing, “Letters That Link Us: Histories and Mysteries of Hebrew Type,” was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota (April 10-11, 2024) with the support of Hidden Stories, the Society of Fellows for Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School, the University of Minnesota, and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Co-organized by Noam Sienna (U of T) and Twin Cities-based artist Robyn Awend, the ambitious event included seven panels, a keynote lecture, a theatrical performance, an interactive printing workshop, and an accompanying gallery exhibition. The gathering brought together an international slate of vibrant speakers, representing a diversity of perspectives, institutions, disciplines, genders, ages, and affiliations, and the event was well attended by local community members.

In his opening remarks, Sienna observed:

“We are all here because we know that books are both material and social objects. They are brought into being through social processes, through networks of social connection; they live within the communities who read, circulate, and collect them. Their lives, like our own, are shaped by many factors, great and small; and like us, they form relationships with others who came before and after…. Hebrew printing is and has always been rooted in an intersectional space: in movement between local and global connections, in creativity between historical and contemporary contexts, and in collaboration between Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Our challenge [is] to hold all these tensions and paradoxes as we explore the plural histories and mysteries of the letters that link us."

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Hidden Stories team member Melissa Moreton joins Global Judaica postdoctoral scholar Noam Sienna at the Hebrew type exhibition featuring the work of modern letterpress printers, MCBA, Minneapolis.

Combining academic presentations with experiential activities, the symposium culminated with a one-person excerpted performance of Mikhl Yashinsky’s recent Yiddish play about printing, Di Psure Loyt Khaym, and a hands-on printing workshop at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, in which participants took home souvenirs that they themselves hand-printed on vintage presses. Participants were enthusiastic about the programming and there was strong encouragement toward making this an annual event!

Convivium Lecture on Jewish Book Culture
Noam Sienna presented a Convivium lecture on February 9, 2024, at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, entitled “The Mishnah MS A: Rethinking the Beginnings of Jewish Book Culture.” The lecture explored the scientific and paleographical analysis of several early Hebrew manuscript leaves now in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (U of T) and the implications for new dating of these codex fragments, which were originally part of the Cairo Geniza cache of manuscripts. Until recently, the field of Jewish book history has faced a significant chronological gap between the latest surviving examples of Jewish books in late antiquity (the Dead Sea Scrolls, ca. 1st century CE) and the earliest surviving examples of Jewish books from the Middle Ages (Masoretic biblical codices of the early 10th century CE). The re-dating of these Hebrew manuscripts to the middle of the 9th century CE, which builds on the research of Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, offers a rare glimpse into the formation of Jewish books in the early Middle Ages, and sheds light on the development of rabbinic culture in Abbasid Iraq.

Events